Measuring Democracy

There are some limitations in the indices of democracy currently available (see my book on democracy on this). However, the Freedom House and Polity IV measures can be used to approximate the democracy scores of countries around the world. Checkout the links I have provided below to see countries’ democracy scores. [For Freedom House data, got to Freedom in the World; for Polity IV, go to Polity IV and Polity IV Country Reports]

Given that economic development is a key factor in influencing democracy and given that corruption is related to lows level of development and democracy, I have provided below some links that measure countries’ levels of economic development and corruption. These are Transparency International, the United Nations Development Program (Human Development Index), and the World Bank.